New Study Reveals a Better, More Comprehensive Way to Measure Well-Being

by Madison Agee, on August 22, 2014

Improving well-being can create a vast range of positive outcomes, such as better quality of life, increased longevity, greater on-the-job productivity and lower healthcare costs. Research has shown that overall well-being is a stronger predictor of health and performance outcomes over time than factors such as people’s demographic characteristics, the amount of healthcare they’ve used, and their behavioral and physical health risks alone.* According to Jim Clifton, Gallup chairman and chief executive officer, “The most important dial on any leader’s dashboard for the next 20 years will be well-being”.

If your organization understands that well-being is an important aspect of its success, step one in putting this knowledge to work, then, is to establish a baseline measure of well-being. This will enable you to determine the effectiveness of any programs you put in place to improve well-being. Sounds easy, right?

It’s actually a highly complex endeavor. Health risk assessments abound in the market, but well-being is much more than physical health. Therefore, measurement tools need to capture information about all five of the interrelated elements of well-being: purpose, social, financial, community and physical.

The Well-Being 5 is based on decades of scientific research by Gallup and Healthways. Experts evaluated hundreds of well-being questions and millions of responses to determine specific question and response wording and question order. The final set of questions in the Well-Being 5 was chosen based on its power to identify risk, comprehensively capture well-being, and predict outcomes with optimal validity, accuracy and precision. The survey experience is designed to maximize both engagement and action, applying principles that include:

Making the best choice the easy choice

Suggesting direct action

Moving the individual through the experience in increments that allow for learning

Providing feedback on what is most valuable to that individual

The new study concludes that the Well-Being 5 “comprehensively captures the known constructs within well-being, is reliable and valid, significantly relates to health and performance outcomes, can be diagnostic and informative for intervention, and can be used to track and compare well-being over time and across groups. Using the Well-Being 5 instrument, well-being issues within a population can be effectively identified, prioritized and addressed, yielding substantial improvements to the health status, performance, functioning, and quality of life for individuals.”

As more organizations look to well-being improvement to help them reduce healthcare costs and improve performance, a reliable and validated tool such as the Well-Being 5 can help. Learn more about the Well-Being 5.

* This sentence was edited on August 28, 2014 to include the word "alone."